


The perils of exploring Atlantis

by Bythia



Series: Just Write: Trope-Bingo 2020 [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bythia/pseuds/Bythia
Summary: All John had wanted, was half an hour by himself on some balcony. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a room without a door. And as if that was not enough, while he waits to be rescued his senses start to play tricks on him.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: Just Write: Trope-Bingo 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897216
Comments: 8
Kudos: 134
Collections: Just Write! Trope Bingo





	The perils of exploring Atlantis

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I should just quit trying to write short Sentinel fusions for SGA, because ... short is not happening in this combination, for me at least. Another story that could maybe someday find a sequel, if I'm ever inclined to make something out of this big plot that's suddenly in my head.  
> But no promises. I'm working on a lot of other stuff and at the moment I just have no interested in writing something long for SGA.
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : I don't own any of the characters or anything of this world. I just borrowed them to play a little bit, and I don't make money with the stories I borrowed them for. But the words are mine, so please don't copy them to use them as your own.
> 
> Have fun,  
> Bythia

For a moment John stared dumbfounded at the wall that had suddenly formed where previously there had been not even an indication of a door. His attempt to get it to open again had failed three times already. Of course, he was in Atlantis and had seen much more outlandish things since they had come here, but that did not mean he was not worried by it. The city-ship held still a lot of secrets and John suspected, they would never discover all, definitely not in his lifetime.

John tapped his earpiece. "Sheppard to McKay."

When there was no reply even after a second try he called the control room, but there was no reply either. He tried it with Lorne, Carter, Ronon, and Teyla and grew steadily more worried while getting not even a hint of an answer. He was not only trapped in a room without a door, but he also was unable to contact anyone outside of said room.

This situation started to get a real problem. All he had wanted to do was to take half an hour for himself and be alone. Of course, something like this had to happen when he had told no one where he intended to go.

John let his gaze wander through the room. There was a bed, a table, and a chair and that had been what had drawn John in here when it had still looked like a hallway ending in a dead-end because he could not remember ever seeing something like this in any part of the city. And they had cleared this part of the city a long time ago, as it was not too far away from the tower with the gate room. There should have been a report somewhere about living quarters without a door.

Expect, maybe the wall that had build up after he had entered had been there when they had explored this part of the city and therefore they had never seen this room. But then the question was, why the wall had vanished in the first place and if it was a coincidence that it had reformed after John had stepped into the room. And for the most part, John had learned that there were no such things as coincidences in Atlantis, especially not if his brand of ATA-gen was involved.

"So, why would you want to trap me here?" John asked aloud.

It was nothing new that he spoke with the city and sometimes he even thought that he got some kind of response from her. But not so this time. There was not even a hint of a reaction and John huffed sulkily.

There was a cupboard over the table, but it was empty, so he closed the doors again. Upon a more thorough inspection of the other three walls, John discovered a narrow door that he could actually open. But it only let into a bathroom, which was empty as well aside from a very basic toilet, shower, and sink. He tested the tap and found that the water was running, which would at least solve one problem if he could not get out of here in the next couple of hours.

Just to be sure, he tried again to reach anyone over the intercom, but to no avail. John let himself drop on the bed with a sigh. There was nothing of help inside this room, and he had nothing with him that could help him.

As much as it galled him, he had no choice but to wait until the others would find him. That could take a little bit of time. First, they needed to notice that he was missing, and that alone could take up to three hours when Lorne would expect him for a meeting in his office. And afterward they needed to locate him and Rodney would need to find a way to get the wall to vanish again or find another way to get John out of here.

John settled down and tried to find something to occupy his mind with. He had planned to find a nice, remote balcony and stare out over the sea, but this room had not even a window. As nice as the interior decor of Atlantis was, he would have much preferred to stare out over the ocean and have the opportunity to decide for himself when he had had enough time alone, instead of having to wait to be rescued.

  
  


It did not take long for John to lose his patience, and he started again to search the room, this time concentrating more on finding hidden panels. He let his fingers wander over the walls while trying to see and to feel for any unevenness that could hint to hidden panels or doors until the tips of his fingers felt numb and he had a headache. He gave up for the moment, when his vision got blurry and sat down on the bed again, closing his eyes. Sometimes he thought he could hear something, but when he concentrated on it there was nothing but silence.

John fell asleep for a little while and when he woke up again, his headache had thankfully subsided. He tried the intercom again, and after receiving no answer took his earpiece out to inspect it, but there was nothing wrong with it that could be detected from the outside. And he had neither the tools to take it apart nor the knowledge to repair more than the most basic failures or to circumvent whatever buffer Atlantis had probably put over this room.

There was still nothing John could do to change his situation and it started to frustrate him beyond all measure. Never before had a part of the city not reacted to him, so what was going on with Atlantis that he was getting no reaction from it?

He knew he could trust in Rodney and the others to find and free him. But that did not mean that he was in any way happy with the fact that he could do nothing else than to wait for them. Even when he had been in that time dilation field, he had still been able to do something, even so, he had not been able to work on freeing himself. Now he could do nothing but sit and wait and it had gotten old fast.

  
  


Time went by and if he could trust his wristwatch, it had been nearly 30 hours. The thing was, he was not sure if he could trust it. He was pretty sure he could not trust his senses anymore. Because he had started to see things that he should not see because they were too far away and too small. And during his fourth inspection of the walls, he had suddenly felt small edges he knew he had not felt previously. Something was up with this room, it had taken out his earpiece and was probably manipulating his watch and was influencing his senses, at least sight and touch.

He had not touched the water, even so the thirst was starting to get annoying. But he was not sure if he could trust the water to be drinkable after he had noticed the first issues with his senses. He could keep going for a little bit longer without water before it would become a problem. Somewhere out there, Rodney was working on the problem, John was sure about that. And he trusted his friend to find a solution at any moment now. Because if his watch was right, then Rodney had had more than enough time to pull of three or four miracles, and to get him out of a room without a door should not even count as a miracle, right?

  
  


A little while later, John was startled by a noise coming out of the cupboard, and this time he was sure it was no imagination. He scrambled up from the bed and ripped the doors open, to find water and food there. And besides that was an alarm clock on top of a couple of sheets of paper. It was the ringing of the clock that had drawn his attention and he shut it off hastily, before putting everything from the cupboard on the table and closing the door again.

John stared at it with a frown for a long moment. He had not even thought about opening it a second time, despite is various inspections of the rest of the room. How had he been able to forget it?

He decided to think later about an answer to that question, and instead took the paper and unfolded it. It was Rodney's striking scrawl in which the messages were written, and all three of them had a timestamp on it. The first one had been written ten hours after he had stepped into this room.

_ 'How are you finding this  _ _ kind of _ _ trouble every single time? Just for once, you could have the courtesy to let me have my free day, don't you think? Whatever, we have eyes on you and know where you are, but no sound and no luck with getting through the damn wall so far. The transporter will only work in your  _ _ direction _ _ , but at least you won't starve. The ancient camera or whatever is over the door to the bathroom, judging from the angle, but it does show the whole room without any blind spots. I need to get my hands on that. I'm sending a pencil with the food and this message. If you need to tell us anything, hold your text to the camera.' _

The second one was sent five hours later.

_ 'You are doing some kind of search of the whole room, but not looking into the cupboard, really? Evidently, your damn stunts of the past have erased every last of your brain cells!' _

John had to laugh about this one, even though he was for once agreeing with Rodney’s sentiment wholeheartedly. The last message was dated an hour later.

_ 'Let's hope this will get your attention. We got a look at your watch and it's not working right. You have been missing for a little more than 16 hours, not 32. Let's hope you haven't found a time dilation field, again! We could use an account from your side on how you got in there! Still no progress in getting through the wall. Atlantis is providing us with vital signs, but the database refuses to give any information about the room.' _

John set down and scribbled a short explanation of how he had found himself in this room on the back of the first massage and held it up in front of him while staying in front of the bathroom door. He held it for several minutes, before deciding that whoever had gotten the task to monitor him should have had more than enough time to read it and take a screenshot for Rodney, even if he was in a time dilation field. And hopefully, he was not, because once was enough for a whole lifetime!

He gave them half an hour while eating the meal they had sent him, or at least what his watch and the alarm clock told him was half an hour before he opened the cupboard again. He had complained about being bored and had expected a book or a laptop to appear. He laughed wholeheartedly when he found the tablet from his office and a handwritten list from Lorne with all the forms he still needed to fill out. His XO had ended it with a short note, saying  _ 'Seems the time for running away is over, Sir.' _

Because the boredom was really starting to get to him, he actually sat down to work an all the paperwork he had tried to avoid or shift to Lorne. He set the alarm clock for two hours, so he would be reminded to take a look into the cupboard again. Somehow it was two very productive hours and John had to admit, at least to himself and even then with no small part of chagrin, that it was not as bad as he made it out to be if he just started to sit down with it.

There were more water, another massage, and his exemplar of 'Peace and War' in the cupboard when he opened it again.

_ 'No time dilation field. At least, if there was one, it is not active anymore. The alarm clock is running at the same speed as the time for us. You are scratching your arm, are you alright? We made progress. Probably. Still checking the data. Lorne suggested blowing up the wall, or at least part of it, heathen. You may prefer to go on suicide missions with a bomb in the heck of your jumper, but I refuse to consider blowing you (or any one of our people) up an option!' _

Grinning, John scribbled a  _ 'Thanks, Rodney!'  _ on the back of the massage and hold it into the camera for a minute or two. He remembered the question only after he had sat down again, and wrote out an explanation about his unreliable senses and the rash that had evolved in the last two hours. He assured Rodney that it was nothing to worry about and that it was probably only the confinement getting to him. It surely would sort itself out if he wasn't confined to sixty square feet anymore.

But the headache had started again while he had worked on his paperwork, so he put it all aside, set the alarm clock for another two hours, and laid down on the bad, in the hope a couple hours of sleep would help. And who knew, maybe two hours more would be enough time for Rodney and the others to finally get him out of here. He really hoped that would be the case because he knew he was not doing well in this confinement. He should be much more prepared for a situation like this one, should be calm and relaxed, but both seemed to be impossible to reach.

  
  


The headache had not subsided when the alarm clock woke him and it was much too loud. John was sure that it had been not so loud earlier and he started to worry about his hearing, too. There was no new massage in the cupboard, and so John just set the alarm anew and went back to sleep, because the headache was bad enough that he could not even bear the thought of looking at his tablet or his book.

  
  


When he was woken up the next time, it was not by the alarm, but by Rodney's exclamation of  _ "Finally!"  _ in that tone somewhere between triumph and exaggeration when he had worked on something that in his opinion should have been child's play but had turned out to be not so easily solved.

John sat up abruptly, but the wall was still closed. "Rodney?" he called out.

There was no reaction, but he could hear Rodney muttering. "That's one problem solved and surely the biggest one. Radek, you need to..."

John turned out Rodney's voice or at least did not pay attention to the words he said. He would not be able to follow half of it anyway and whatever Rodney had done to break the sound barrier, it only seemed to work in one direction. John settled back down on the bed and listened to Rodney's strangely soothing voice. He had liked to listen to Rodney's rants from the very start, but after nearly a day in absolute isolation, it felt like a special kind of treat to hear him again.

John did not go back to sleep again, but listening to Rodney's ramble somehow helped more against the headache than sleep had done. And it helped to calm him down and let him be patient because now he knew that it was only a matter of time until Rodney would finally find a way to free him. He had to know what he needed to do, he just needed to find the right way to do it. And that could be a tricky task with ancient technology.

He was on his feet instantly when he heard another cry of triumph from Rodney and just a moment later the wall seemed to disintegrate.

Rodney was standing on the other side with a tablet in his hands and a wide grin on his face. But the grin faded as soon as he saw John and he blinked surprised. "Oh!"

John stared at Rodney. There was something different about the other man, but he could not put his finger on it. He felt even more drawn to him than most of the time and for a moment it was hard to not follow the desire to gather the engineer in his arms and kiss him. It was not a new thought, he had often fantasized about it in the past, but he would never dare to actually do it.

Keller stepped up behind Rodney and John involuntary growled. Rodney raised his arm and held her back. "No, stay back. You don't want to engage with a newly awoken Sentinel, who is probably not in his right mind after being isolated for a day."

"Sheppard is no Sentinel!" Keller protested.

And John had to nod in agreement. "I've been tested more than once for that gen, and it came back negative every single time."

Rodney cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "You want to tell me you are not tracking my heartbeat at the moment? And probably any other noise my body makes, that I don’t even want to know about."

John blinked dumbfounded because he could not deny that he had been listening to Rodney's heartbeat and the rush of air in his lungs with every breath since he had been able to hear him. He had just not registered it until this moment. And because he was already concentrating on heartbeats, he did not miss the spike in Keller's heartbeat as he nodded.

"First thing first, grab your things and come out of there!" Rodney ordered. "Because even so it should only be a minute to open the wall again, I don't think it's a good idea for you to get trapped again in your condition."

John did not even think before he followed Rodney's directions. "You are my Guide," he muttered while doing so. Because he had been educated in many things concerning Sentinels and Guides in Annapolis and for him, it was glaringly obvious.

Rodney snorted. "Nice of you to catch on to this fact nearly four years down the road. I … I had already started to give up on you ever coming online."

"This is impossible!" Keller injected and John could not hold himself back from growling at her again.

"You should step back, Dr. Keller," Carter interjected. "You don't want to come between a nearly feral Sentinel and his Guide. - Colonel Sheppard, Lorne is clearing the route to your quarters and Dr. Biro is standing by to give you a once over."

John ignored both. "Do you want to be my Guide?"

"What kind of question is that?" Rodney asked irritated and with furrowed brows. "Of course I want to be your Guide! Have you looked at you?"

John grinned. "Most of the time of the last four years I have spent looking at you. - So, are you game to come to my quarters with me to bond?"

This time Carter held Keller back when she started to step in again.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "All I'm waiting for is for you to start moving!" He turned halfway, without taking his eyes from John. "Radek, I think there is something you need to look into."

"Will do." Radek nodded grimly, but John had no idea what they were even talking about. "I will have answers for you as soon as the two of you are finished."

Rodney nodded. "Let's go, John. Dr. Biro needs to look at you and you need something to eat. You have ignored the second meal we sent you."

John grabbed his hand and started to lead him along the shortest route to his quarters. "You knew all along that I could come online as a Sentinel?"

Rodney shrugged. "Of course. You never wanted to speak about it and I thought it was because despite all we had faced here you had never come online. I hadn't expected you thought you were entirely mundane! - I should have known what was happening to you after you told us about your senses! How could I have been so…"

"You were concentrating on other things," John interrupted him. "Did you find out what that room is?"

"A prison for Ancients. It seems our Wraith cage was actually build to contain the beasts they were studying. But we haven't figured out yet how you ended up in there."

John frowned. "Or why a little bit of isolation brought me online."

Rodney snorted. "I think, the question is what held you back from coming online in the past. Radek will have answers for us." He suddenly grinned. "You know, that's an excellent reward for all the work I put into freeing you."

John raised a brow. "And do you expect me to reward everyone with sex who helped you free me?"

Rodney sputtered outraged and John laughed. "I was doing all of the work anyway!" Rodney said indignantly.

"So, it was a day like any other here on Atlantis, huh?"

  
  


The rest of the day turned out unlike any other day John had ever had, on Atlantis or elsewhere. They got rid of Biro as quickly as they could, but Rodney still insisted on her checking John over to make sure he had suffered nothing more than any newly online Sentinel did, while John would have liked to send he away right away, mostly because he really did not like anyone being so near to Rodney at the moment. He felt relived when he could finally close the door to his quarters behind him and Rodney and lock out the rest of the world.

He had often dreamed about seducing Rodney and chastised himself for these thoughts because there was no way for any kind of long term relationship between a Guide and a mundane. To have sex with Rodney was so much better than he had ever dreamed of, and John knew that was partly because of the new range of his senses and because of the bond forming between them. But it was also so because in his dreams he had always thought that it could never actually happen.

They managed to spend two days in John's – soon to be both of their – quarters without being disturbed by anyone. In between the sex, they managed to talk about a lot about their lives and what would change for them with their bond in the future. Normally John hated to talk about his emotions, even only with himself, but he found himself quite eager to open up to Rodney and his Guide held nothing back himself. John had never before felt so content in a relationship with anyone and he was reluctant to leave their small bubble of solitude.

But the rest of the world had not stopped to spin and they were both aware that they were probably needed. They had still the rest of their lives ahead of them to spent it together and John was suddenly, for the first time in a very long time, determined that it would be a long life. He had not searched for his death in the past per se, but he had accepted a long time ago that being part of a military base in the Pegasus Galaxy would not lead to a peaceful retirement but an early death in defense of his people on Atlantis and of Earth. But now, with Rodney in the picture as a more permanent part of his life then ever before, such an outcome was not acceptable anymore.

It was pure chaos they stumbled into and for once the chaos was not caused through a threat from the outside, but from an uncovered conspiracy in the inside. Rodney had tried to warn him of this possibility, probably because he had seen more in Keller's behavior that John had, but he had not been willing to believe it. Maybe because until two days ago he thought his ire against Keller stemmed from her obvious interest in Rodney. John had not expected her to be part of a conspiracy that had to reach as far back as his early childhood when he had been tested for the Sentinel and Guide gens the first time.

"You don't need to apologize for hacking my medical record. This time, at least," John interrupted Radek's rambling to get on with the meeting that they had been drawn into the moment they had stepped out of their quarters. "Let's just hope that we don't need to make a habit out of it."

"Yes, of course, Colonel," Radek muttered. "It was not your official medical record either. Becket and later Keller kept a separate file for you and a few others in similar circumstances. They kept giving you a drug every four weeks, that would keep you latent no matter what. I have no idea how it works and we probably need to find the source on Earth to get an answer to that question. But the file indicates, that you were drugged with this substance from your early teenage years on and every doctor you were referred to through your carrier at the Air Force has kept up with it."

"There is not much more we can find out from here," Carter continued. "Keller hasn't said much since we have arrested her. I think she is expecting to be rescued from whoever has given her these instructions."

John frowned. "You said there were others with such hidden files. Here on Atlantis?"

Carter nodded. "Yes. Eight soldiers and five civilians are currently here. Others have either died or gone back to Earth."

"That's unacceptable." John clenched his fists.

"Are we prepared to help so many through coming online at once?" Rodney asked.

Carter shook her head. "We had a lot of luck that you were here for Sheppard, McKay. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been prepared for even one Sentinel coming online. I have spoken with all of them already. In the great scheme of things, it won't matter if they get one or two more doses of this drug. They need to get back to Earth to be monitored while they go through detox and probably come online in the process. But before we can send any of them home, we need to get to the root of this."

"I had no bad reactions to the … detox, as you called it."

"You are a special case, Colonel," Dr. Biro said solemnly.

Carter sighed. "And I think we just got confirmation that Atlantis is somewhat sentient or aware at least. We found proof that she managed to prod you in this prison cell because every person's body put in there is automatically flushed of any foreign substances. The isolation did the rest for you to come online. We don't know what will happen with the others."

"Who in your family would have started such a thing, John?" Rodney asked softly.

"My father." He had not even to think about it. His father detested Sentinels and Guides and John would not be surprised if they discovered that his father had funded the research for this drug. He would have had the connections and the money for it.

Rodney sighed deeply. "So, John and I are going home to meet the family then. And to uproot a conspiracy. That will be a fun holiday!"

John frowned. "I don't think … I'm not sure if I'll be able to leave Atlantis for long."

Carter looked up surprised. "You have already imprinted on a territory?"

John shrugged. "I think that happened at the latest when I defended Atlantis against the invasion of the Genii. I … have since then felt very protective of this city."

"I'm not surprised by that," Dr. Biro said thoughtfully. "I don't think the drug works as the files have described it. It was not suppressing all of your Sentinel traits. I often thought in the past you instincts were more those of a Sentinel than of a soldier. But maybe that is a byproduct of the bug incident. We can't know that for sure until we had an opportunity to analyze this drug and its effect on the other victims."

"We need to go home to at least register with the Foundation," Rodney said directly to John. "And I think you will be driven to find those who have threatened you and our people, once we are there. It will override any urge to return here. - And I suggest we take Miko with us because we need a hacker and there is no one I would trust more with such a task than her."

John looked to Carter, who nodded her approval and took a deep breath. "Okay, let's go home and … wrack havoc. We need a plan because we don't know who is involved in all of this inside the SGC and we won't want to alert them that we know of them. Who can we trust with this information? And should we find a pretense for Miko, Rodney and me for coming back to Earth?"

They lost no time to start their planning and called for Miko and Lorne to join them just a couple of minutes after they had started. John kept out of most of the discussion because he had barely any knowledge about the Sentinel and Guide community and the Burton Foundation. All he knew were the glimpses he had gotten from working with S&G-pairs in his various postings because as a presumed mundane there had never been any need for him to learn more about it.

After they had a somewhat solid plan for Earth, they began making plans for Atlantis for the duration of John's and Rodney's absence. For that, John had a lot of input. He could not leave Atlantis behind without taking every possible precaution for her security. He felt that he would have a hard time leaving the city at all and he was not seeing that Rodney's prognosis of his focus shifting, once they were on Earth, would hold true. But he was prepared to trust his Guide and he had a feeling that he needed to be there for the investigation into his father and the fallout.

John had not expected to see his father ever again and he made his peace with that long ago. He would go back to Earth to clear this mess up, but even now he could not wait to come back home to Atlantis when it was all said and done. Because Earth had not been home for a very long time now, maybe even since the very moment he had sat down in a chair in Antarctica, had gotten his first glimpse of Atlantis, and at the same moment had heard for the first time the voice of the man who would change his whole life.

** The End **

(probably… for now at least)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the "Isolated/Trapped" square of my Bingo Card.
> 
> And: BINGO!  
> The second one. Or more likely, the fourth. Because: two post stamps and two columns.


End file.
